1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packet relay processing apparatus optimizing a server which has a server load balancing control capability, a NAT (Network Address Translation) capability, a bandwidth control capability, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) capability, and a firewall service capability.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the recent popularization of the WWW (World Wide Web), and packet communication services of e-mail and cellular phones, the Internet has been rapidly expanding. Because of this phenomenon, the demands for speeding up networks and for enhancing capabilities such as security, etc. have been rising. A current network service is normally implemented by a configuration composed of a server and a network connecting device such as a NIC (Network Interface Card), etc. Since recent network services have been becoming complex, a platform implemented by a server is suitable in terms of being able to flexibly meet diverse and new demands.
FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a conventional packet relay processing apparatus. The packet relay processing apparatus shown in this figure has a general configuration such that a server and network connecting devices implement services on a network. In FIG. 1, thin arrows indicate the flow of control information, whereas thick arrows indicate the flow of packet information.
In this figure, the server 100 comprises a packet processing unit 101, service 1 to n processing units 102, and service 1 to n controlling units 103.
The service 1 to n processing units 102 perform session management and routing according to a policy set by the service 1 to n controlling units 103, and further perform service processes such as filtering, load balancing, etc.
A packet that is input from a network via a network connecting unit 106 is transmitted to the packet processing unit 101 of the server 100 via any of the network connecting devices 104 and any of packet communicating units 105. Then, the packet is processed by the packet processing unit 101.
Since the Internet has been quickly becoming larger in recent years, the amount of packets flowing on a network has been exhibiting an exponential growth. For this reason, the above described conventional server is almost unable to meet the requested processing speed, and a technique for speeding up the processing speed of a server is demanded. At the same time, it is desirable to lose the advantage of being able to integrate many services of a server as little as possible when creating a new platform.